Introduction: Eclipsed by the disastrous financial news of recent months, as well as relatively superficial considerations-lipstick, hockey mom, moose huntress-Sarah Palin’s political resume and heritage is genuinely frightening. Although downplayed or ignored by mainstream media, Sarah Palin’s profound relationship with the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) augurs very poorly for American politics. Anti-American, politically retrograde, deeply racist and dedicated to fracturing the republic, the AIP is the Alaskan element of the Constitution Party. This fascist political party has run candidates endorsed by the Aryan Nations and dedicated to the successful re-establishment of the Confederacy. In addition to echoing the neo-Confederate endorsement of Southern Secession, the AIP has actively sought the support of the Republic of Iran in attempts to separate Alaska from the United States. Earlier in 2008, Palin sent a greeting to the AIP’s convention, endorsing their efforts. Those knowledgeable about Palin’s political heritage assert that this greeting was predictable. In fact, the AIP had much to do with shaping Palin’s political agenda when she was mayor of Wasilla and she continued to permit access to her AIP mentors when she became governor. (Her husband Todd Palin was a member of the AIP until recently and is described by acquaintances as a “shadow governor.”) Former Nixon cabinet official Walter Hickel became governor of Alaska running as the AIP candidate! Although he later switched back to the GOP, Hickel takes credit for Palin’s election. Of great significance is the AIP’s ideological affiliation with other secessionist elements around the world, including elements associated with the UNPO, an organization that champions the independence of “unrepresented peoples.” Although it represents itself as egalitarian and progressive, the UNPO’s agenda actually works to undermine the political and geographical integrity of larger countries that might present a rival to the Underground Reich. Of more than passing significance is the fact that Palin quoted fascist columnist Westbrook Pegler in her speech before the Republican Convention. It is also worth contemplating what the Nazi elements in the Bush administration will do with a seated African-American President.

Program Highlights Include: The AIP’s support for Tibetan secession, the AIP’s support for the Lakota secessionist movement; the AIP’s support for Hawaiian secession; the AIP’s support for Chechen secession; the endorsement of Constitution Party Presidential candidate Michael Peroutka; by Aryan Nations head Richard Butler; Sarah Palin’s origins in Sandpoint Idaho-an epicenter of the White Supremacist movement.

1. The secessionist party with which Sarah Palin is closely affiliated has a violently anti-American agenda.

“‘My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.’

This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.

Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that’s the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. (‘Keep up the good work,’ Palin told AIP members. ‘And God bless you.’)

AIP chairwoman Lynette Clark told me recently that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal. ‘She’s Alaskan to the bone … she sounds just like Joe Vogler.’

So who are these America-haters that the Palins are pallin’ around with? . . .”

” . . .Vogler wasn’t just a blowhard either. He put his secessionist ideas into action, working to build AIP membership to 20,000 — an impressive figure by Alaska standards — and to elect party member Walter Hickel as governor in 1990.

Vogler’s greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States ‘tyranny’ before the entire world and to demand Alaska’s freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue.

That’s right … Iran. The Islamic dictatorship. The taker of American hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have excoriated Obama for suggesting we diplomatically engage. That Iran. . . .”

3. Although the mainstream media have ignored or downplayed the connection, the AIP is very close to Sarah Palin and has helped to shape her political agenda. AIP luminary Mark Chryson has helped to forge the link between Palin and his party.

” . . . Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory. . . .”

4. Chryson and the AIP network with White Supremacist and neo-Confederate organizations. The AIP’s web site links to many of the site maintained by groups supported by the UNPO (as well as the UNPO’s website), such as the Tibetan, Hawaiian, Lakota and Mongolian independence movements. Note that the UNPO–represented as a progressive, egalitarian organization–supports the rights of minority peoples in order to weaken and breakup larger states that might prove a rival to the Underground Reich. The possibility that an economically and politically devastated U.S. might disintegrate is one to seriously consider. Certainly, having a major-party Vice-Presidential candidate affiliated with an organization such as the AIP is very disturbing. Note that the AIP’s website has a quote from Confederate President Jefferson Davis at the top of its front page. It is also significant that the Constitution Party, which counts the AIP as its Alaskan affiliate, ran Michael Peroutka for President. Peroutka is a member of the League of the South and his candidacy was endorsed by Richard Butler, the now-deceased head of the Aryan Nations.

” . . . Yet Chryson maintains that his party remains committed to full independence. “The Alaskan Independence Party has got links to almost every independence-minded movement in the world,” Chryson exclaimed. “And Alaska is not the only place that’s about separation. There’s at least 30 different states that are talking about some type of separation from the United States.”

This has meant rubbing shoulders and forging alliances with outright white supremacists and far-right theocrats, particularly those who dominate the proceedings at such gatherings as the North American Secessionist conventions, which AIP delegates have attended in recent years. The AIP’s affiliation with neo-Confederate organizations is motivated as much by ideological affinity as by organizational convenience. Indeed, Chryson makes no secret of his sympathy for the Lost Cause. ‘Should the Confederate states have been allowed to separate and go their peaceful ways?’ Chryson asked rhetorically. “Yes. The War of Northern Aggression, or the Civil War, or the War Between the States — however you want to refer to it — was not about slavery, it was about states’ rights.”

Another far-right organization with whom the AIP has long been aligned is Howard Phillips’ militia-minded Constitution Party. The AIP has been listed as the Constitution Party’s state affiliate since the late 1990s, and it has endorsed the Constitution Party’s presidential candidates (Michael Peroutka and Chuck Baldwin) in the past two elections.

The Constitution Party boasts an openly theocratic platform that reads, “It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions and to restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations.” In its 1990s incarnation as the U.S. Taxpayers Party, it was on the front lines in promoting the “militia” movement, and a significant portion of its membership comprises former and current militia members.

At its 1992 convention, the AIP hosted both Phillips — the USTP’s presidential candidate — and militia-movement leader Col. James ‘Bo’ Gritz, who was campaigning for president under the banner of the far-right Populist Party. According to Chryson, AIP regulars heavily supported Gritz, but the party deferred to Phillips’ presence and issued no official endorsements. . . .”

5. In her speech at the Republican convention, Palin quoted Westbrook Pegler, a reactionary columnist viewed as a fascist by many, including George Seldes. (See below)

” . . . ‘We grow good people in our small towns,’ Palin said, quoting someone identified only as a writer, ‘with honesty and sincerity and dignity.’ That ‘writer,’ Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank notes, is a man named Westbrook Pegler. You have probably never heard of him, but he was a very popular and very right-wing columnist from the first half of the 20th century. How right-wing? He openly wished for the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt, for one. . . .”

5. Author George Seldes devoted a chapter of his 1943 opus Facts and Fascism to Pegler.

“It is the opinion of many persons and organizations that one of the most widely known and read newspaper columnists, Westbrook Pegler, is aiding the Axis rather than the United States in this war; it is a fact that the New York Newspaper Guild, the organization of thousands of Pegler’s colleagues, so stated when it sent President Roosevelt a documentation of twelve instances out of Pegler’s writings.

It is a fact that newspapers, columnists, radio orators and others who form public opinion have served the Axis propaganda. It is also true that too frequently those who know and who make these charges do not name names. They, therefore, emasculate their own words.

For example, here is the director of the U.S. Conciliation Service, Dr. John S. Steelman, who states:

‘Careless recital of the dramatic side of strikes in the press and on the screen and over the radio has given too many people the impression that our war efforts are being held up in a serious way because of willful strife in a major part of American industry. This is a dangerous lie that serves the purpose of the Axis, but serves no good end among us.’ Dr. Steelman knows the culprits, but he is not in a position to name them. He is aware that Kaltenborn on the radio, Pegler in the newspapers, the entire Hearst and Howard press are those guilty of careless recitals about strikes.

On the other hand here is the statement issued by the conference directors of C.I.O. editors (Washington, April 11, 1942):

‘Labor has been subjected to an infamous campaign of misrepresentation, for the purpose of cutting wages, destroying union organization, and in advancing the profits of special interest groups. Most of the daily press has joined in this campaign, together with such radio commentators as H.V. Kaltenborn and others of his type. This anti-labor propaganda campaign, if not directly inspired by Axis agents and American appeasers, at any rate plays their game by striking at national unity and undermining labor morale.’

Again, the official organ of the National Maritime Union, The Pilot, states that ‘Pegler’s sales talk has the made-in-Berlin label.’ . . .”

7. Whether relevant or not, it is interesting (and possibly significant) that Palin is a native of Sandpoint, Idaho, an epicenter of the white supremacist community.

8. It is also worth contemplating what the Nazi elements in the Bush administration will do with an African-American President.

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #652 Palin by Comparison”

Just FYI, if you’ve ever been exposed to the herbicide paraquat (I’m looking at you, hippies) and you have a family history of Parkinson’s disease, new research suggests that you may want to take extra precautions to avoid any sort of head trauma. It appears that head trauma and paraquat exposure triple the likelihood of developing Parkinson’s.

These findings, of course, also means you may need to avoid any US political news for the next, oh, four years or so. It’s going to bea bumpy ride.

Political Research AssociatesIf Democracy is a Crime Under Religious Right’s Biblical Law, What is the Punishment?
By Frederick Clarkson, on August 21, 2014

The League of the South, best known for its advocacy of white supremacy and the secession of Southern states in the name of Southern Independence, has another less well known dimension: The advocacy of Old Testament notions of the “law of the Bible” as the standard for contemporary civil law— including the prescribed criminal punishments for non-believers.

The League and its leaders are not exactly household names, although New York Times best-selling author Thomas Woods is an unapologetic founding member and close confederate of Ron Paul. But they overlap with the more extreme elements of anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice movements, and led by elements of the virulently theocratic theological strain, Christian Reconstructionism.

Contemporary Christian Right leaders have focused on matters of sexuality, notably homosexuality and women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). But it wasn’t until the notorious “kill the gays bill” in Uganda, where the notion of the death penalty was formally raised. But if the Old Testament Biblical Laws that are foundational to the contemporary Christian Right are to be the standard, then it stands to reason that the biblically prescribed punishments would, in their view, fit the crimes. If that is so, then many of us who think that democracy and religious pluralism are good things may, come the theocracy, find ourselves guilty of capital crimes.

League of the South president Michael Hill laid it out in stark terms in a recent column.

In a piece titled The League and Theocracy, Hill claims that theocracy is what God wants for us, and that anyone who says otherwise is committing treason against God’s Laws. While this is serious enough coming from an organizational leader, in the wake of the Hobby Lobby decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, it is worth considering that such views maybe more common than usually meet the eye.

Hill argues that religious pluralism is an affront to “the law of the Bible,” and anything other than a theocratic approach to Christianity and government is, he declares, “watered-down, emasculated, wimpy, liberal-sotted ‘Christianity-lite’.” A theocracy, he insists, “is a government ruled by the triune God of the Bible: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. More precisely, it is a government whose code of law is firmly grounded in the law of the Bible.”

…

In light of this, Hill’s argument may sound arcane and his reasoning circular—but it is nevertheless worth understanding because Hill is far from alone in such views, and arguably versions of his thesis are part of the driving ideology of the wider leadership of the Christian Right and their agenda.

Hill continues:

“Simply put, locate the source of law for a society and you have found its god. In a democracy, for instance, the people serve as god – the ultimate source of sovereignty…. All societies are theocracies, whether they realize it or not. But there is a major difference in what traditional Christians (regardless of denomination), on the one hand, and pagans, on the other, have believed and that is this: a society that is not explicitly Christian is a theocracy under the sway of a false god. The false god of the modern American Empire is the god who demands tolerance and pluralism…”

In this way, Hill identifies democracy as idolatry (worship of a false god) or apostasy (abandonment of the faith.) Either way, as Hill understands it, these will not be matters of religious but civil law. And they may well be capital offenses. These, along with more than 30 others, were enumerated by the leading theocratic theologian of the 20thcentury, R. J. Rushdoony—an American whose work has been profoundly influential in catalyzing the contemporary Christian Right. Beyond such crimes as murder and kidnapping, death penalties apply, according to Rushdoony and the influential Christian Reconstructionist movement he launched, are mostly related to religion and sexuality. In addition to idolatry and apostasy, there is blasphemy, and the propagation of false religions, and specifically, astrology and witchcraft. Crimes related to sexuality include adultery, homosexuality, and premarital sex (for women only).

In his foundational tome, Institutes of Biblical Law, Rushdoony called idolatry, “treason” against “the one true God.”

These things said, there are many contemporary theocrats who do not follow Rushdoony down every detail of what ought to be the basis of a criminal code in the U.S. and everywhere else in the world. But since Rushdoony was the first to systematize what he calls “Biblical Law,” everyone interested in the topic measures where they are stand in relation to him. (Biblically approved methods of execution, according to Reconstructionists, include stoning, hanging and “the sword.”) How the law would be implemented, would depend entirely on the interpretation of the Bible, and the political predilections of the leading faction at the time.

Hill writes: “There is really only the choice between pagan law and Christian law and nothing else. There is no neutral position where one can comfortably sit. The God of the Bible specifically forbids pluralism (“Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” Ex 20:3).” Hill couldn’t be clearer that in his view that religious pluralism under the law, is idolatry. “The simple choice that lies before nations,” he concludes, “is either pluralism or faithful obedience to God’s word, and the two are mutually exclusive.”

Like his fellow members of the League of the South, Maryland Republican candidates Michael Peroutka and David Whitney, Hill argues that if governmental leaders fall out of synch with Biblical Law—“If they rule unfaithfully, and thus tyrannically, they are illegitimate and their decrees have no authority.” Peroutka and Whitney have previously made this point regarding the Maryland legislature’s endorsement of marriage equality.

So this is the problem for contemporary Americans wrangling with the definition of religious liberty. Is religious liberty to be reserved only for Christians of the right sort, as defined by the likes of Hill, Peroutka and Whitney (or other leaders of the Religious Right and the Catholic Bishops)? Or is religious liberty something that belongs to all citizens without regard to their stated religious or non-religious identity at any particular time?

Such questions have, in centuries past, been the stuff of religious wars. And some Christian Right leaders are coming to see violence as an inevitable result of contemporary religious and political tensions on these matters. The question of whether, or to what extent, opponents of contraception and abortion get to define the standard for religious liberty in these matters was not settled by the Hobby Lobby decision. And who gets to be the arbiter of religious liberty on marriage equality is also deeply contentious, in light of the spread of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which has been proposed in several states and signed into law in Mississippi and allows businesses to discriminate against LGTBQ employees and customers if their personal faith does not approve of homosexuality. The legislation is modeled on a bill which was originally crafted in large part by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF, formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund), and the Arizona political affiliate of Focus on the Family. But in North Carolina, the mainline protestant United Church of Christ (UCC) has filed a federal lawsuit against the state’s constitutional amendment banning the performance of same-sex marriage ceremonies. The UCC argues that this law violates the religious liberty of their church, its clergy and its members. The million member denomination has officially recognized same-sex marriages since 2005. As it happens, a recent federal court ruling in Virginia overturning a similar amendment, may also apply to North Carolina which is located in the same federal court jurisdiction. At this writing,, it appears that will be the case.

But even as the courts are recognizing marriage equality and the debate over religious liberty continues, the view of doctrinaire theocrats that governments and government officials and others who do not comport with God’s Law as they understand it, remains unchanged. How they reconcile their views with the contemporary struggles over the law is also a struggle whose outcome remains to be seen. However, it is worth not losing sight of the fact that for some, there is no answer but armed resistance. Hill has called not only for the South to rise again, but to lead the resurrection with vigilante death squads targeting government officials, journalists and others who do not comport with their particular religious and political views.

We have become almost accustomed to hearing declarations from the likes of these men justifying vigilante violence against everyone from abortion providers to government officials, said to be tyrants. But it is helpful to remind ourselves that the society that they envision is not only based on Biblical Laws, but on Biblical punishments. And those who advocate for religious liberty, and if the theocrats ever achieve their desired governmental control, are likely to find themselves charged with a variety of crimes, and punished accordingly.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, a vehement opponent of gay marriage, issued a statement of support for Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore in his battle with the Federal government over gay marriage, calling for like-minded citizens to get ready to stand with Moore. Oh wait, that wasn’t Scalise’s press office, but a different like-minded organization making that ‘call to arms’. Easy mistake:

“The Mississippi Klan salutes Alabama’s chief justice Roy Moore, for refusing to bow to the yoke of Federal tyranny. The Feds have no authority over individual States marriage laws,” the United Dixie White Knights’ Imperial Wizard, Brent Waller wrote, wrote in a post on the group’s website and on the white supremacist forum Stormfront.

“We call upon all Klansman and White Southern Nationalist to help in the massive protest’s coming, Not by wearing your colors, but by joining in with the Christian community’s protests that are surly coming against tyrannical Federal judges,” Waller said.

However, the group realized its support may have made an implication about its relationship with Moore and clarified that he is not a member of the Klu Klux Klan.

“The UDWK has read many posts in the media put out mostly by Homosexual reporters and Atheists that claim Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is a member of the KKK, and activly sought and gained our support. To answer in short, these are lies and typical of that crowd. We simply agree with anyone, who stands against Tyranny, stands for the word of God, and believes in the American Constitution as it was originally written,” Waller wrote on the group’s website.

“We regret any problems our post may have caused the Chief Justice or his Family. Roy Moore is not a Klansman, but he is a man, who believes in God,” Waller continued. “This Country is sick of the spineless people who put out such lies. We need more Justices who do not see the Constitution as a living breathing document to be shreded (sic) and Amended at will.”

…

“We call upon all Klansman and White Southern Nationalist to help in the massive protest’s coming, Not by wearing your colors, but by joining in with the Christian community’s protests that are surly coming against tyrannical Federal judges,” Waller said.

Right Wing WatchRoy Moore’s Showdown With The Courts Over Gay Marriage Tied To The Work Of Neo-Confederate Leader
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 2/12/2015 1:30 pm

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore threw his state into turmoil this week when he ordered probate judges to defy a federal judge’s ruling striking down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage and refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. Moore, who has a history of making extreme anti-gay statements, insists that the federal judge is the one who is really breaking the law since she violateddivinelaw by ruling for marriage equality.

Moore’s call for statewide defiance of the federal judiciary’s “tyranny” stems from a belief that the Constitution was made to protect biblical commandments, so that anything that goes against his personal interpretation of the Bible is therefore in violation of the Constitution.

Moore shares that belief with a powerful ally: Michael Peroutka, a neo-Confederate activist who is also one of the most influential behind-the-scenes figures in the Religious Right’s reimagining of American law.

Peroutka, who once held a leadership position in the neo-Confederate League of the South and remained a member of the group until it hampered his run for a local office in Maryland last year, promotes this theocratic view of the law through his group the Institute on the Constitution. Speaking at an event at the Institute in 2011, Moore gushed that Peroutka would help lead America to a “glorious triumph” over the federal government’s “tyranny.”

After Moore was removed from his original position on Alabama’s high court in 2003 for defying a federal court order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building, Peroutka paid for the ousted judge to go on a national speaking tour to build support for his cause. He also funded a group that held rallies in support of Moore.

Over the nine years, Peroutka contributed over a quarter of a million dollars to two groups founded by Moore, the Foundation for Moral Law (which is now run by Moore’s wife Kayla) and the now-defunct Coalition to Restore America.

In 2004, the far-right Constitution Party tried to recruit Moore to run for president on its ticket. When he declined, Peroutka stepped in to run in his place.

This neo-Confederate leader helped to lay the ideological groundwork for Moore’s current standoff with the federal courts, a standoff which many commentators have compared to Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s decision to defy federal law on desegregation.

Peroutka said last year that such rulings would “coerce” state officials to “declare that which is sinful and immoral” to be “valid and right,” even forcing them to “participate in it.” Such “evil” decisions, according to Peroutka, must be “resisted at every level of government, even the lower levels of government, most especially the lower levels of government,” since local governments are the true “protectors against those who would force these things on us tyrannically from above.”

For example, after a federal judge struck down Kentucky’s ban on same-sex marriage last year, Peroutka insisted that Sen. Rand Paul move to impeach the judge who made the decision, defund the court, and press for his state to defy the ruling: “He should use every influence he has in Kentucky to have people not obey this; the Kentucky legislature, the Kentucky courts, should not obey this, this is not lawful.”

Peroutka also believes that local officials should defy their state legislatures on issues like marriage equality. After Maryland’s general assembly voted in 2012 to legalize same-sex marriage in the state, Peroutka declared that the assembly’s decision to “violate God’s laws” effectively invalidated its legal authority, since any law that contradicts divine law does “not constitute a law – even if it were enacted and signed.”

Using an argument similar to the one Moore is now making in Alabama, Peroutka said that lower-level officials could ignore not only the marriage equality law but any law passed by the state’s general assembly, since it had invalidated itself by breaking biblical decrees: “Is it possible that those who are sworn to uphold the law, such as police and sheriffs and judges and prosecutors, may soon come to the conclusion that the enactments of this body should be ignored because they are based not in law, but in lawlessness?”

“I always go back to these two standards: What does God say and what does the Constitution say?” Peroutka explained in 2013.

He added that the United States will have a small, limited government as long as it adheres to biblical standards. But he believes that the Union’s victory in the Civil War — or as he calls it, “The War Between the States” — enabled the federal government to greatly expand its powers, thus undermining the authority of biblical law and leading to such evils as same-sex marriage.

“Ever since then, there’s been this huge black hole of centralized power that’s formed in Washington, D.C.” he said. “People sometimes talk about ‘The War Between the States’ as being about the issue of slavery. I believe that history is written by the winners, it wasn’t about that at all. What it was about was consolidating power into the hands of a few people.”

“[T]he real effect of the war and the Reconstruction after the war was to take the very foundation of our understanding of our rights away from us, that is to say that they come from God, and put them in the hands of men and say that they come from the Supreme Court or they come from the legislature or they come from the executive,” he added.

The end of the Civil War, Peroutka claims, produced an “evil anti-God, anti-Christian revolution” that led to a “tyrannical consolidation of power” in Washington, D.C., undermining the “biblical worldview that acknowledges Christ’s authority over all things.”

Peroutka also contends that the gay rights movement isn’t just “federalizing homosexuality” but “federalizing perversion,” even claiming that the federal government violated the Constitution by imposing civil rights laws on the states.

“[T]he so-called civil rights laws are not law,” he said in 2013. “They never should’ve been passed. They’re not law now, they weren’t law then. They aren’t law now because there is no such thing as a civil right.”

Since Peroutka believes “rights come from God” and not civil government, he argues that all civil rights laws are illegitimate since “the term ‘civil rights’ is kind of an oxymoron. There’s no ‘right’ in the sense of a permanent, fixed, thing that you have, that can be defended, if in fact it comes from the civil government.”

Now Moore is once again putting Peroutka’s words into action, threatening state judges who lawfully issue a marriage licenses to a same-sex couples. Because in the eyes of Moore and Peroutka, their personal reading of the Bible takes precedence over the law of the land.

The end of the Civil War, Peroutka claims, produced an “evil anti-God, anti-Christian revolution” that led to a “tyrannical consolidation of power” in Washington, D.C., undermining the “biblical worldview that acknowledges Christ’s authority over all things.”

…

“[T]he so-called civil rights laws are not law,” he said in 2013. “They never should’ve been passed. They’re not law now, they weren’t law then. They aren’t law now because there is no such thing as a civil right.”